


The Rhymes of Goodbye

by Zigzagwanderer



Series: Love is a Journey, not a Destination [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Desert, Feelings, First Time, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Resolution, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-22 14:00:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13765647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigzagwanderer/pseuds/Zigzagwanderer
Summary: After the Fall, Hannibal and Will are hiding and healing in the desert.





	1. Chapter one.

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this series on AO3 last year, got a bit depressed, despite the lovely support I received from the Hannibal community, and so deleted the lot. But because 'Love is a Journey, not a Destination' is the backstory for the current series, 'Tomorrow was our Golden Age', I am re-posting. Seems I can't go forward unless I go back, but apologies if you've already taken a look at this. Your kindness was sincerely appreciated the first time around, things just all got a bit much. xxxxxx

Goran drives Kai from their rough-walled compound through the dusty land in their dusty truck. Everything below the horizon is ochre, the sky a hard blue shell over the rocks and dirt roads and lizards. They both have beards now and wear beaten-soft cotton shirts. Not to do so in this desert neighbourhood would be to draw the eyes of the other rogues and hermits, and the curious gun-barrels that those eyes belong to. Kai envies Goran his still, lean cool; in a different continent, at a polo luncheon, Kai thinks, it would be called _insouciance_ , but here, the way Goran wears his leather and snakeskin is a less civilised cue that the man is not to be fucked with, that he will hurt you, quite casually, with a Pampeano boot to your face, if he perceives that you are in the way of his shot.

Their destination appears to be a canyon full of scrap, scoured steel skeletons and browned iron carcases scattered about the sagebrush as if many generations of armour-plated creatures had dragged themselves there to die.

Goran tells Kai it is a kind of store.

The quiet words come just in time. Kai's fear is a ruin now, something archaeological that the healing and peace of the last few months has covered in fine, warm sand, but it is perhaps better preserved for that smoothing over, inviolate now, safe and deep and old.

Goran walks towards the junkyard in his grimy, warning black, while Kai checks the lines of his body for weapons that he is not already familiar with, seeking the Judas knife, the strange holster, the promise that this outing will be the one that ends with him bleeding out into the hungry earth. This place that they crawled to, away from the water, is a place ripe for Kai's long-delayed death. It is full of space and silence into which one more chunk of flesh will hardly be a toothful. But Goran has pointedly left the keys in the ignition, and his dark sunglasses on the dashboard, so maybe the end will not come on this particularly sharp, yellow afternoon.

The store-keeper's caravan of trailers is set up further along the winding path of the extinct arroyo. Chillingly isolated, naturally sound-proofed and invisible, it is yet cheerful of curtain and planted about with the kinds of flowers that children are given to tend, cartoonishly bright and stalwart. They dip large, petalled heads as Kai trails warily behind, each angle and slant of sunlight picking out a different metallic colour in Goran's hair, his beard, the tanned skin between his scars. Kai has become adept at not being caught looking. At not showing what he wants. He has learnt to still the racing of his longing heart.

They stop and await service. The laden washing-lines overhead and the piles of broken guns around them are no more of a contradiction than the dinner parties and locked cellar doors of their past lives; Kai ponders on his new surroundings less these days than he wonders what other people make of them when they tank up at the gas station or pick over the desiccated vegetables at the unfriendly weekly market. He closes his eyes and pictures Goran leaning back against their truck, wares singing for themselves in scratched plastic flagons, beautiful hands resting on the tailboard,sinewy enough to tear it in two.

Kai watches while men approach and exchange something for Goran's sublime distilled alcohol, but he disdains to participate in this commerce as he refuses to join in with so many other parts of their new existence. Instead, he wanders the periphery, restless, currying tangles from his unruly hair. Vultures dive up and down in the endless sea above them. Kai knows the long looks the men use on Goran are just another currency, establishing local values of deadliness and illegality, but he needs these soundless appraisals to be about envy.

He lies in bed at night, down the short corridor from Goran's room, and envisions the thoughts he wants these brooding, exiled men to have about him and Goran. About them touching. Holding hands. Whatever.

It is a corruption of his empathy, he knows, a misuse of his once crystalline imagination. But then, the nights are so long. And hot. And so very full of circling carrion birds, that he puts himself behind their lonely glances and lets himself use them, using him.

"I think you misunderstand." The words, in the rougher, more Slavic tone Goran has adopted since they moved to their long, low cottage, with its armaments and reinforced walls, carry the suggestion of the frown that his face doesn't deign to show. "The filtration system has to be intergrated. Fully."

Technical words interest Kai, so he has been following the bartering with less indifference than usual, especially as they have a perfectly functioning well in the compound. Of all things, water is not an issue for them. And, of course, their simple life is nothing but pantomime, or more accurately, camouflage. They could drink fancy champagne every day if they wanted to. Or imported Arctic melt.

The junkman is bullish, on home turf, and some sort of expert on standalone survivalist equipment.

Goran, though, is a monster.

Eventually, this telegraphs itself to the merchant; perhaps there is something missing behind Goran's eyes, perhaps it is the predatory carriage of his lovely head. Most likely it is more primal even than that, the universe adjuring the prey to fulfil its natural potential, to offer its neck to a thing that is entitled to kill it.

Kai is idly perusing the sorted crates of machine parts, palms itching for grease, when he feels the realisation hit the man's hind-brain. It is a wicked impulse, but Kai smiles down into the firing-pins and ratchets all the same. It really is so funny, when bad people meet someone authentically worse.

The children are playing in a patch of grass, several feet squared, in the shade of the rock wall. It is fenced off from all the pointed things, all the hard-edged things that are otherwise so carelessly strewn about, and it is clearly watered and tended well. The three youngsters who have been awarded this prize are companionably rolling about in its lush, dewy splendour, swapping dollies and cooing in satisfaction. The green winks like a jewel. The children sparkle more, clean and vivid in the powdery landscape, its constant, chalky colours forever bleached and dream-like, its memories forever ancient, forgetting what its own youth was like.

The fattish man glances frequently at his children now, as if he were holding up a signpost to the thing he loves most in the world.

The man's shotgun has been resting against a shed the whole time.

Goran wrinkles his nose in an aristocratic fashion, and Kai wants to chuckle, and reassure the evidently sweating junkman that this monster is not a _rude_ monster. He is here on business. But Kai barely speaks in front of Goran, let alone laughs near him, and has not uttered a compliment since the last time he tried to kill them both. So he roams amongst the rubbish, and simply lets Goran sigh, and apply quite reasonable pressure, with no threats at all implied, with regards to price, delivery timescales, and certain thermostatic specifications. The handing over of cash helps, and the junkman squirrels it away inside his office-trailer, returning to Goran with some scribbled contact details. The deal is struck.

There is a blanket, and food and drink in a cooler, on the flatbed.

A quarter of the way back to the compound, Goran pulls over and they sit under the colour-shift that flags the very start of the falling of the night. A deepening of white-blue to blue. As complex a change as you need it to be.

Kai always pecks where he wants to gobble, wanting to wound Goran daintily. The bread Goran cooks in their outdoor clay oven has secretly become Kai's favourite thing. His scarred mouth waters from the moment he smells the foamy starter warming on the windowsill, right through the actual baking of the dough, to the moment when he tears the crust apart, tops it with goat-sharp cheese and honey, and licks it right up.

Goran would probably place each slice directly into his mouth if Kai asked him to. If it would garner a word, a reaction. A little civil gratitude. But instead Kai just chews impassively, staring up until the horizon begin to ripple with improbable colours, colours which do not belong in any sane sky, yet appear there every evening just the same.

"The water purification plant." Goran has been sipping iced tea. He speaks almost to himself out of habit, the low slide of his natural voice shivering across Kai's skin. He has already poured Kai a third cup of the incomparable moonshine, the resinous ambrosia, and Kai feels molten with it. "Snipes can source one discreetly, and have it shipped privately to where it will be installed. There is one on the island, but I thought it would be prudent to replace it, if it is going to be in constant use."

He turns slightly to watch a snake move into the warmth of some nearby scrub, now that its fiery god has abandoned it.

"The island?" Kai's voice is slow, creaking, yet it startles them both.

They carefully do not look at each other, even now it is dusky, calmer on the eyes. Goran even takes the time to select a few more crescents of the dry-cured meat. Recalling the way their conversations used to be, perhaps.

"Yes." He stops for no reason Kai can see, then continues. "I own an island within the Sarvia Archipelago. Near Finland. It is remote and the people are well-known for their disinterest in the larger world, even in other neighbouring islands. Most of which remain uninhabited. The rest are practically autonomous."

"The Baltic."

"Yes. The sea is clean, the land uncluttered. The property on the island is self-contained, of course. Hydroponics, and the like. Wave turbines for the generator." Goran moves his hand then, dreamily, like cresting water. "The soil is good. There is a small quay."

It is there, for an infinitesimal moment, between them. A house neither have yet seen, of white-painted wood, with a latticed veranda. The garden on one side of it is full of things a-growing. Down below the terraced lawn, the sailboat rocks on the slate water, which shimmers with silver life.

No dust. No parched skulls on the roadside.

It is a mirage in the sand.

Kai starts laughing. A low, nasty sound in the gorgeous, imperial night, which has now nearly folded right over them in purple, edged still with gold.

"Is that your grand plan for us, Hannibal?" Will coughs underneath his unpractised words, but even the gravel does not lessen the venom. "Sugary domesticity? A hand-stitched quilt to throw over all the...the...monstrosity?"

There is a faint echo to the final word, which Will realises must be in his head just as Hannibal abruptly stands up and towers over him, head crowned with early, trembling stars. In all honesty, Will was expecting either more of the same cautious patience his companion has shown since their fall, or a death blow.

He has not, up until that moment, considered anything in-between.


	2. Chapter two.

Goran simply packs the picnic away and gets into the truck, driving off purposefully enough so that Kai has to run, and holler, and smash the passenger door to get him to slow enough to allow entry. Once they are retracing their earlier route, Kai curses, laughs some more, then finally subsides, clutching the thermos of alcohol to himself, swishing it around his wounded mouth between icy swallows. The side windows are down, and the air is flowing around his face in a pummelling fashion, but Kai thinks that if he could see his own reflection, it would be that of a ruined cherub, self-righteous yet contemptuous of most accepted moralities, a being fit for neither paradise nor the pit.

Glazed with booze and the monotony of the landscape, Kai only realises where they are heading when they are respectively striding and stumbling towards Snipe's ill-lit pod of trailers.

He grabs out into the darkness. His fingers clutch clumsily at a perfectly curved, unstoppable bicep. Right from when the water spat them out, Kai has seen Goran repair himself, slinking from his room to watch as Goran exercised in their red-clay yard, even when there was as much blood as sweat to be cleaned off afterwards. But it is only here, in the black canyon, that he sees how little it had to do with vanity. Goran has to be strong. In every way. To contain what he is, as well as to protect it.

"What the holy fuck, Hannibal?" Will's whisper is hoarse and frantic. "Are you really gonna..? " He can't even say it. He is a fool. He knows what happens next. He has lost and lost again because he hurt his love's feelings.

Will shakes his head at himself. But it does not make any part of that admission any less true.

There is a rotating night-light in the trailer where the children sleep, dappling the thin shutters with pastel ponies. A calliope melody prances out too, making Kai feel suddenly sick.

Then he recalls the guard-dog, even as Goran is reaching for it.

"No, Hannibal." Will's cry is soundless. His voice is too unused. And possibly would not be heeded anyway, for he has surely squandered whatever sovereignty he once had.

He saw the dog before, chained up and scrawny, panting under inadequate shade, but he has learned to ignore the pangs such sights give him. Animals are possessions in the badlands, not pets. To avoid an altercation, he must look away. The price on his monster's pelt is too high to risk unwanted attention, even if the passing months are slowly mythologising them both, this Will-and-Hannibal, so that soon they will be spotted everywhere, and so at the same time nowhere at all.

But for now, he needs the dispatch to be merciful at least, so he surges forward, in time to see the meat in Goran's hand disappear into the dog's mouth. Goran is speaking softly to the animal, feeding it and slipping a noose of rope around its thick neck. It is little more than a pup, wary but untrained in its role as defender of the pack. It is also hungry for all the things that dogs need, so it doesn't bark once, just submits to the stroking and the endless meat and the gentling syllables.

Kai is both horrified and impressed. He waits for the garrotting but it doesn't come. Just more cajoling. Reassurance. Meat.

Then a stark sodium light goes on and the ballet begins. Will finds Hannibal mesmerising when he dances through such extreme situations, unique in an ungraceful world. Saving life, or taking it. Always the principal player, even if not directly under the spotlight.

"You...bastard...what _you_ want?" Snipe has emerged in just a pair of tatty boxers and there is clearly too much burger meat in his diet. Too much beer. Too much tobacco. He has, of all things, a paperback in one hand. The shotgun is eventually aimed at them, but surprise and adrenaline he does not know how to channel wag the end. His face is slack where it should be fixed.

Hannibal straightens up. And it _is_ Hannibal, now. No slithering cowboy hips nor Goran's sullen, sexy smile. Just a monster, straight and true, and to Will, beloved.

"I want the dog." Hannibal says it without inflection, and very, very clearly. Will knows that Hannibal felt weakened by the hole the Dragon burned through him, and while he could take another such scorching, he doesn't want to.

Hannibal wants them to go and live on a Baltic island.

So Hannibal is patient, and speaks as if to an infant.

"I will pay you."

Snipes is baffled. He shakes his greasy head. "You want that shitty dog?"

Will is confused too. As a diversion for some other heinousness, adopting a slobbering mongrel seems poorly thought out.

"Yes. I will put money on the ground and take the dog."

The dog is uncertain now, and begins whining. It pulls one way against the rope restraint held by the new friend, then the other way against the metal choke chain, which is bolted to a concrete block. It yelps when something hurts.

Will blinks. He hears insects chatter underneath the irritating loop of the lullaby. In a moment, the children may wake, curious.

Kai touches his glasses and wipes over his mouth with his hand. He doesn't need to pretend to be drunk, a little edgy. An idiot.

"My fault, bud," he drawls. "I been drinkin' and I bet him he couldn't steal the mutt. No harm done, bud." He backs away a little, shrugging, and pulls at Goran's shirt. Lets his fingers catch for a moment on Goran's waist. "Never thought this crazy asshole would go through with it, right? For a lousy twenty bucks."

Hannibal is as pliable as the limestone hemming them in. In a few thousand million years he may be convinced to move back towards the truck. Or not.

"Money." Hannibal states again, distinctly. "And I will leave with this dog." 

He coils himself downwards, puts another loop in the rope so that the dog is harnessed rather than leashed, and throws a roll of banknotes into the brighter part of the puddle of light spread out at Snipe's feet. The end of the shotgun moves, and with it the junkman's focus, towards the money.

"This a fucking joke?"

Snipe isn't even looking at Hannibal. Will isn't looking at anything else.

"Yes."

" No. " Hannibal snaps the chain around the dog's neck with his hands. Will swallows.

Water may never again visit this canyon, but the wind is not so fickle. Hot air hisses around the trailers, through eviscerated washing machines and a veritable church organ of sawn-off lengths of pipe. Slyly, it flicks and fingers and fans out the cash away from Snipe.

Teasingly. Because it likes monsters.

Snipe hurriedly jogs down the trailer steps to grasp at the price of a shitty dog before the notes go fluttering off into the desert. The shotgun bumps against his belly, no longer a priority.

Kai bows his way out, mumbling apologies and letting himself be sworn off the man's territory.

He finds that Goran has already gone on ahead, but two shotgun shells, evidently removed from Snipe's weapon during their first, less surreal visit earlier that day, stand upright in a circle made from the broken dog-chain. Kai snickers to himself as he passes the tiny tableau, but by the time he gets back into the truck, Will is composed, and once more as far away from Hannibal as a pleasant little house on an island is to the ugly, grasping wilderness of the desert.


	3. Chapter three.

The next morning, there is no yeasty aroma for Kai to wake up to. All he gets is the essence of his own nocturnal rutting and a too-rich, too-veinous stench that he tracks, somewhat biliously, to their kitchen.

The dog is breakfasting on liver porridge.

Kai fends for himself and waits for his gift to be explained to him.

But Kai is not given the dog. It struts around the compound, eats nutritious meals and ventures to sniff at Kai's hand if Goran is not available, but it is not presented to him. Not at all.

Goran washes the dog, kills its fleas and puts salve on any minor cuts and chafing. He cleans up its shit. Every time it gravitates to him, adoringly, wonderingly, he attempts communication with it in a respectfully grave tone. In between, he serenely goes about his day.

He showers. Checks the internet. Uses a burner phone. Exercises. Showers. Cooks. Eats. Reads.

But there is something studied about the serenity.

And, of course, there is the mystery of the dog.

So, Will stops watching Hannibal, and starts observing him. He is out of practice, but it is like old times.

Many people have told Will how Hannibal laboured to deceive him. A boss, a friend, a shrink, a rival, a wife. And oh, how he agreed with them all. But that, in fact, was the lie. Hannibal has only ever wanted Will to know him. So there have always, _always_ been clues for Will to see. Words and metaphor. Actions and allusion. He has become fluent in Hannibal, even if Hannibal no longer thinks they share that same language.

So Will stands in the doorway, the night a meaningless conundrum overhead, and puzzles over all the minute pauses, expressions, hesitations and tells that he understands better than his own, rabidly inconsistent behaviour. Then he stands under their shower and as the lukewarm water chills his skin, Will concludes that Hannibal has not been serene, today.

Hannibal has been thinking, today.

Hannibal has been thinking about leaving Will.

_Thank God_ is his first reaction. In gratitude, he almost stumbles to his knees on the wet, tiled floor. That he could be free. It had seemed against the natural order of things. It had seemed that nothing, not incarceration, betrayal, or attempted murder-suicide could dissuade Hannibal from the chase. There were refusals, then reckonings, then off they went to a new tally-ho.

Will has grown so unbelievably weary of being _hounded_.

But now, he dries himself and dresses, and wanders outside again with a drink in a shaking hand. He is numbed with the power of finally being allowed to go to ground. With the triumph of it.

His whole body is shaking, vibrating with a sense of absolute freedom he cannot even remember having had as a child. It is a mad thing in him now, such freedom, given what he has grown up to be.

He lets drops of water fall from his hair and it is a dark constellation in the sand. He beats the side of the porch swing with his elbow to feel the impact, and begins to believe in the reality of the moment. If he smashes his glass against the smokehouse wall, it will stay in shards in the dirt. 

He has done what he set out to do. He has killed Hannibal-and-Will.

Because Hannibal will leave him in the morning.

In the kitchen, Will fishes out a stock-bone from the pot and stuffs it with the enriched brown paste that Hannibal has been tinkering with all day. Experimentally, he licks a spilled smudge from one fingertip and grimaces, but grins too. Freely.

Predictably, the dog is curled up at the side of Hannibal's bed. It is easily lured with the sludge-filled bone, drool stringing like diamonds in the moonlight and Will checks it has fresh water and is happily occupied before he returns to Hannibal's room.

He leans over, makes sure that Hannibal is certainly awake, propped up against clouding pillows in a lordly manner, then Will kisses him right across the mouth. It is wet and roaming, this first kiss.

Hannibal is shocked into a glacial stillness. It is clearly an outcome he had not prepared for, and that in itself makes Will's groin _ache_. It is a wretchedly ungainly seduction, with Will sprawled sideways, balancing all of his weight on his damaged shoulder, but his coltishness has never offended Hannibal before, and he is entirely unable to stop kissing Hannibal now that he has started, even for the second or two it would take to assume a more dignified position. He is instantly and irrevocably enslaved by the texture of Hannibal's skin, the burn of Hannibal's beard against his own chapped lips. Will retraces his own sticky saliva trails as he starts to lick and bite amid the kissing. Jaw and earlobe, cheekbone and philtrum. It is all heaven. He has to remind himself to breathe.It is like nothing else ever recorded in the history of the world. He wants to gnaw Hannibal right down to the skull.

"Fuck. God. I don't want to stop." Will groans softly to himself, and knows that he cannot recover from this, that he has inflicted upon himself an addiction that after this night he will not even be able to feed, let alone cure.

At this invocation, _finally_ , Hannibal moves. He brings one hand up from beneath the fluid material of the bedcover and curls it around Will's throat. It happens gently, the joints of each finger curling into a gesture not far from a caress, but Will knows it is a question mark, inscribed with tendon upon cartilage.

In answer, Will slows but does not pause in his kissing, because he is free now, and so he can decide now, and this is what he chooses now. Hannibal tightens his grip. Will begins to lose air. Hannibal has endured many injuries from Will, but he cannot accept mockery like this. Better Will leaves now, and Hannibal will very kindly overlook this last insult.

But will has never experienced a hunger like this, not in his own life nor the hundreds of dark lives he has willingly or unwillingly stepped into. There has been no insanity as consuming as this, no desire as brutal. If it was relevant, he would regret wasting poor Molly's time now, wedding her to such lacklustre touches, to such apologetic completions. But she is not relevant. No other person has ever been relevant in truth; Will has coveted and denied himself this from the very beginning. It has torn him in two. He drags his lips over Hannibal's because they belong there, and he wants teeth, he wants spit and bile and blood, uncaring now of what may befall him in consequence. Even if what Hannibal delivers now is painful asphyxiation, he must still have it.

So he kisses, and kisses, and whispers, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Will feels something tectonic beneath him shifting. He feels one tension leave the places their bodies are aligned, to be replaced by another. It is not yet enough. He groans again and bites down, hips rising, then pulls away to look, taking off his glasses, then putting them back on, his night vision not as practised as Hannibal's. The windows that do not face the internal courtyard are small for reasons of security. Will wants to beat a hole in the wall with his fists and let the scanty radiance outside discover them.

"Fuck, I need to see you. You're so fucking beautiful." He pushes down hard on Hannibal's shoulders, hands gripping convulsively, as if splaying Hannibal out will help. He is desperate and serious. "God damn you. I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since the day we met."

He catches Hannibal's eyes. They are bright, animal eyes in the half-light. The hand that was on Will's throat has slipped to his collar-bone, fingers spread possessively. The other is tucked under Will's thigh, gripping tightly enough to mark. Will thinks of claws and licks his lips. Then Hannibal clicks on a switch and a ridiculously ornate Tiffany-style reading lamp lights up nearby.

Dazzled, Will thumbs Hannibal's sly smile. Touches the fringe of hair that is falling so charmingly forward. Blinks rapidly, wondering what the fuck he's doing. Then Hannibal tugs Will to him and kisses back, and now, _now_ , it is deeper, better, the strong muscle of Hannibal's tongue driving into Will until he is mindless, until he is hard and dizzy.

He pulls the sheet down, panting. Under the barley-sugar glow of the lamp Hannibal is the desert itself, immutable, all tawny hollows and golden rises. Here and there, snakes have left their marks in the sand, lighter strokes that Will immediately dips his head to kiss away, wanting to eradicate all scars except those he gifts to Hannibal himself.

"Hannibal. Hannibal. Hannibal." He mouths artlessly over Hannibal's nipples. Will is all of his years, and all of his inexperience. He is a middle-aged man with very few past lovers. He is not clever at this. Not skilled. All he has to offer is his appetite.

"Will." The breath comes hot between them, nonetheless. It is an agreement. A vow of sorts. The deal is struck.

Hannibal is naked but for some kind of raw silk pants that cling and accentuate his hips and attract Will's hands as if the lustrous black was magnetic. Will is wearing a lot of clothes. The undressing is a pulling apart of old disputes, a dismemberment of nerves. Will takes off the fraying bathrobe he put on to interrogate the night, and jeans and shirt that he has allowed to become ragged because he resented that Hannibal bought them for him. Hannibal takes off Will's sweated-out underthings slowly, inhaling the damp of them. They kiss constantly, because it is everything. _Everything_. Will is touched greedily, pinched and manhandled backward, onto the bed. Hannibal strips and crouches over him, between his spread legs, staring down. The desert is a devouring maw. It is hungry. It has been hungry for a long time. And it has never, once, been given _anything_.

So it has to take. And take. And _take_.

Hannibal consumes Will. Methodically. From armpit to ankle, there is no part of him that is not tasted and savoured and chewed upon. He is wet from Hannibal's tongue, raw from Hannibal's teeth, shivering from Hannibal's breath. Will sobs and cries out, over and over, but who would really expect mercy from the desert?

"I've never wanted to kill you more than I do right now." Will is grinning as he whispers and whines; he can hardly speak for stop-start sensation. He has a foot hooked over Hannibal's shoulder so that Hannibal can lick at the salt behind his knee. Red grit from the yard sprinkles from between Will's toes.

"Shall I stop then, William?" Hannibal's face is spit-slicked and he wipes the worst of it away with his forearm in a comfortable gesture that Will would be happy to witness for the rest of his days. His hair is sticking up at odd angles. He sits back on his heels, shameless and loving. His mouth is a swollen smile but still he nips his way back down the inside of Will's thigh. And swallows Will into his throat. Definitively.

Will has been attempting to grab and stroke Hannibal, feeling as blind and uncoordinated as he did when they were newly stitched and awash with morphine, but any kind of reciprocation halts right then and there, his empathy overridden. He is lost. He makes sounds like the animals do out in the desert at night.

But, he too is in love, so he steadied himself against the pull of the river, the rise of the flood, and reaches down to coax Hannibal up to face him, feeling the dense weight over him, murmuring fond things as he begins a gentle undulation that Hannibal swiftly matches.

And that is what ends them both, the simple grind of it, just touch itself, skin to skin, kiss to kiss.

It is like extinction. It takes them a while to return to life. Hannibal idly licks them clean.

They are tangled in silence together when the dog comes snuffling in. It regards them with a cocked head, Hannibal-like already, it seems, then sneezes and settles to sleep on Will's discarded bathrobe. Will moves his lips from Hannibal's chest so that the words can come out.

But they do not. 

Asking why Hannibal deserved to have a dog when he did not is too sharp a thing to hack up. It is a question tinged with gall. It will lead to other, bloodier expulsions. There seems little point in poison or purge now, because Hannibal will leave Will in the morning.

"The dog was staring at that pathetic patch of greenery." Hannibal speaks so quietly that Will feel the answer more than hears it. "Lying in the dust."

Will remembers. He doesn't say anything but he remembers. The dog had pointed itself at the children's little garden, the precious little handkerchief of grass. Head up and paws out. Pulling the chain taut in order to get a better view.

"It was lying there, staring at the one thing it wanted most in the world. It couldn't stop looking, but it knew it was something it would never have."

Hannibal speaks musingly, as if these reflections are just in his head. His fingertips continue to run along Will's arm, his hip-bone, his spine, as if Will too might be something he is merely imagining. Will folds himself in a little tighter. They haven't broken contact now for an hour or more, and Will knows that when they do separate, the places where they peel themselves apart will haemorrhage and may never heal.


	4. Chapter four.

Will wakes up alone. Alone in the bed. The room. The compound. Alone in the world. Hannibal is gone. He has taken the dog, so he has taken the truck. Will sees the sense in that.

There is plenty of flesh left in the freezer, and the starter for a batch of bread has already been set out to froth in the shade of the morning sun. 'Kai' spied upon 'Goran' enough times to make something edible, Will thinks, biting his lips in thought, until the sweet soreness of it stops him dead, remembering. Hannibal is _gone_.

Will checks the concrete cavity near the base of the well, and under the guns there are passports with Will's face in, and banking passbooks that match the names in those passports. There is money in the accounts. So much money. Will swears, pointlessly, out loud in the empty yard. He swears mainly because there is nothing of Hannibal left, no paperwork, no pictures. Hannibal's ghost sweats and bleeds for a moment, completing the morning's calisthenics, but the sun is bright and Will's eyes soon water too much for him to hold the image steady.

He sits in their kitchen and checks their tablet, then corrects himself and thinks of it as his kitchen and his tablet. There are emails confirming that a dealership will be sending him a jeep. Groceries are coming, and apparently Kai has just signed up for an account with an online travel agency. Will puts his head in his hands and smells Hannibal on the inside of his wrists. He should take a shower.

He does not even wash.

Will, or Kai, or Armand, or Thom, can stay where he is if he likes. He can work the still, drowse in the heat of the day and hunt in the cool dark. He can find peace here, or he can raise hell. He can pick fights with these badlanders, or he could systematically let them all fuck him. He can do what he likes.

He could also travel.

Hannibal talked about the world, when Will was still fighting with the Atlantic on dry land. When the infections caused by dragon-bites were winning. Hannibal's voice and hands were steady, guiding Will back even through the swirling madness brought on by fever and regret. Hannibal spoke of waterfalls and skyscrapers, palaces of fractured mirrors and cities drowned in jungle. Marvels and oddities.

Will has resources now. He need never stop looking at the extraordinary.

He has grown used to having something singular nearby him at all times.

He debates with himself, there being no-one else, until the next day breaks. Until the red and purple dawn matches the sweetly aching marks on his thighs, his neck, his heart. His forensics training reminds him that in twelve to fourteen days' time all physical traces of Hannibal will be gone from his skin. Only the scars will remain, and with his funds, even they can be erased. He shudders, despite being familiar with separation anxiety. It isn't as if he has never suffered loss before.

He throws a glass jug of moonshine at the sunrise.

"This is fucking bullshit, Hannibal," Will shouts.

He makes up his god-damned mind. 

He decides.

Kai will tour the district, do what he can for anything he sees in distress. Unbelievably, he will finish what Hannibal began. The donkey left out in the sun. The underfed dogs. He will set free, notify the proper authorities, or if he must, he will avenge.

Then Kai will burn the fucking compound to the ground.

Then Armand, or maybe Thom, will go see some shit. A temple here. A river delta there. Nothing too remote or too time-consuming. Just enough to keep his conversations interesting over the winter months in the Baltic.

Because then, Will is choosing to go home. Of his own will, as it were.

To sit on the white veranda of their little white house. To sail on their grey slate sea.

Learn from Hannibal how to make a decent loaf of sourdough. A drinkable Akvavit.

Learn, even, how to cover up their mutual monstrosities with a coverlet they stitch up together. From skin and scars.

Will stands up and stretches. He could do with a shave. He still feels free, under the hard blue shell of the sky. 

He always will, now. 

He walks towards the doorway, and smiles, and wonders what the hell Hannibal has ended up naming their dog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading/re-reading! Next instalment from the Vakkrehejm 'verse (winks at Victorine) up in next few days. Thanks again for all the support.xx


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